docBiography / Exhibitions
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Biography / Exhibitions
Mel Ramos *1935 in Sacramento, California Mel Ramos, painter of nudes and a pioneering Pop rebel, is considered one of the most important representatives of the California variety of POP ART. After spending a large part of his youth in California, he began studying art and art history in 1954 at Sacramento Junior College and then at Sacramento State College a year later. There he was taught by famous painter Wayne Thiebaud, and graduated with a Master of Arts degree. Like his colleagues in New York he began his career as a commercial graphic artist, and was similarly preoccupied with the everyday mythology of his time: with comic-strip figures and the synthetic dreams of the advertising world. Since the appearance of comic strips at the end of the nineteenth century there had been a wide variety of reciprocal influences between the fine arts and comic art. In the nineteen-fifties and -sixties, however, British and American Pop Art started an artistic discourse whereby the fine arts sought new expressive possibilities in their controversial citation of comic motifs. Mel Ramos’ paintings also celebrate the idols of his childhood, and beginning in 1961 he immortalized in oil paintings such super heroes as Captain Midnight, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and these brought him his first successes. The physical presence of the figures is communicated by his impasto style of painting; the figures accost the observer frontally and seem almost ready to pop out of the canvas. Isolation and aestheticization lead to an “iconic” appropriation of the pictorial world of comics. Since 1963 Mel Ramos has developed a penchant for the conventional erotic fantasies about women, from cartoon super-heroines and dominatrices all the way to pin-up girls. It is particularly with his pin-up girls, taken from advertising posters and magazines and draped over painted commodities, that Mel Ramos parodies the trivial affectations of glamour of the advertising industry, which attempts to influence consumer behaviour with these types of marketing strategies. With his legendary advertising pin-ups he has given consumer goods such as Coca-Cola, Gitanes, and Cohiba a sensual eroticism. At first glance one could also take many of his works to be typical product advertisements of the era. Despite the clarity of his composition and his balanced forms, Mel Ramos – like many artists of Pop Art – works with double entendres, for his works are formulations of an erotic fantasy that illustrates a fundamental pattern of marketing strategies in advertising. Irony is a constant presence. Ramos exposes the advertising industry’s strategies by exhibiting them as visual quotations. From 1972 on Ramos satirized the nude paintings of classical masters such as Ingres, Modigliani and Manet in his “Unfinished Paintings”, whereby he replaced these masters’ subtle eroticism with the more direct sex appeal of the pin-ups. He transformed the original compositions into contemporary interpretations with drolly ironic undertones. Even works by Willem de Kooning, an important influence of his student days, were satirically reworked by Ramos. For the passionate fan of the female figure it makes no difference whether he availed himself of high art or of mass media. “It is important to me to use well-known cultural symbols, which everyone immediately recognizes.” His paintings, populated by provocatively smiling heroines, are an expression of a positive world view. “Criticism is not my goal, nor my justification. I simply want to show phenomena”, says Ramos, “and my entire art is an homage to women.” LEVY Galerie | Osterfeldstrasse 6 | D-22529 Hamburg | T.: +49-40-45 91 88 [email protected] | www.levy-galerie.de Besides his wife and favourite model Leta, he has immortalized innumerable beauties (including Hollywood stars) in striking poses and glowing colours: they are captured in his paintings as seen through oversized keyholes, surrounded by tropical fruits, enthroned on gigantic consumer products, or with wild animals and rare birds. Today, Mel Ramos lives and works in Oakland, California and Horta de San Juan, Spain. His paintings hang in many important public collections and Museums (such as the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, Museum Ludwig in Aachen, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle). SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2013 Galerie Hilger, Vienna 2012 Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento 2011 Albertina, Vienna 2010 Galerie Hilger, Vienna Modernism, San Francisco Kunsthalle Tübingen Museum Villa Stuck, Munich 2008 Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York 2007 Stadtgalerie Klagenfurt LEVY Galerie, Hamburg Robert Sandelson Gallery, London 2006 Walter Bischoff Galerie, Berlin Claustro de Exposiciones, Cádiz Galerie Hilger, Vienna 2005 Galerie Geiger, Konstanz James F. Byrnes Institut, Stuttgart 2004 Robert Sandelson Gallery, London Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York 2003 Bernaducci-Meisel, New York 2002 Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna Palazzo dei Sette, Comune di Orvieto 2001 Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna Galerie Levy, Madrid 2000 Kunsthaus, Köln LEVY Galerie | Osterfeldstrasse 6 | D-22529 Hamburg | T.: +49-40-45 91 88 [email protected] | www.levy-galerie.de 1999 Galleria Civica di Modena Kunsthaus Hannover Museum Moderner Kunst – Stiftung Wörlen, Passau 1998 Galeria Nova, Bad Homburg 1997 Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna Galerie Levy, Madrid 1996 Modernism, San Francisco Galerie Levy, Hamburg Galerie Ulrich Gering, Frankfurt Galerie Levy, Hamburg 1995 Kunstverein Mannheim Kunsthalle zu Kiel Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna 1994 Kunstverein Lingen 1992 Galerie Maximilian Krips, Köln ARTAX, Düsseldorf 1991 Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York 1988 James Corcoran Gallery, Santa Monica 1987 Studio Tresorio, Neapel 1986 Galerie Tanja Grunert, Köln Hokin-Kaufman Gallery, Chicago 1981 Modernism, San Francisco 1978 Galeria Plura, Mailand 1977 Oakland Museum, 1. Retrospektive 1975 Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld 1974 Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York 1972 Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City 1971 Galerie Richard Foncke, Gent French & Co., New York Galerie Bruno Bischofsberger, Zürich 1967 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 1966 Galerie Ricke, Kassel 1965 David Stuart Gallery, Los Angeles 1964 Bianchini Gallery, New York LEVY Galerie | Osterfeldstrasse 6 | D-22529 Hamburg | T.: +49-40-45 91 88 [email protected] | www.levy-galerie.de
